In its metaphysical meaning, it is opposed to Evolution, yet one with it.
Science teaches that evolution is physiologically a mode of generation in which
the germ that develops the foetus pre-exists already in the parent, the
development and final form and characteristics of that germ being accomplished
in nature; and that in cosmology the process takes place blindly through the
correlation of the elements, and their various compounds.

Occultism answers that this is only the apparentmode, the real process being Emanation,
guided by intelligent Forces under an immutable LAW. Therefore, while the
Occultists and Theosophists believe thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution as
given out by Kapila and Manu, they are Emanationists rather than Evolutionists.
The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the
Alexandrian as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the
Chaldean and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabbala,
and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that
the Hebrew word asdt has been translated “angels” from the Septuagint, when it
means Emanations, Ćons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy
(xxxiii., 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as” fiery law”, whilst the
correct rendering of the passage should be “from his right hand went not a
fiery law, but a fire according to law “; viz., that the fire of one flame is
imparted to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable
substance. This is precisely emanation. As shown in Isis Unveiled : “In Evolution,
as it is now beginning to he understood, there is supposed to be in all matter
an impulse to take on a higher form—a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and
other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree
illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the
followers of this school and the Emanationists may he briefly stated thus

The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of ‘ the Unknowable “;
the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the word means,
unwombed or born—except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life
is